


since the world's not ending

by newsbypostcard



Series: Comedy Oneshots [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Ficlets, Fluff, Humor, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Minor Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson, Musicals, kitten rescues, opinions about pop punk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2018-11-19 05:39:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11306835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: Loosely connected ficlets, or -- Bucky and Steve make out on a haunted carriage ride; Bucky rescues a kitten from a storm drain and takes it very seriously; Bucky and Sam infiltrate Big Boi's Meat Market; and other tales from this side of the ice.





	1. Big Boi's Meat Market

**Author's Note:**

> Some of these are tumblr ficlets, some are expat sections from now-complete fics. All are humour or fluff.
> 
>  **ETA June 2018** —I'm adding new ficlets here after previously marking this fic complete. The first six chapters were published in 2017; the last three will be published over the coming weeks in summer 2018. All new ficlets have been posted on tumblr before—you can follow me [there](http://newsbypostcard.tumblr.com/)!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based off an unintentional prompt on [tumblr](http://newsbypostcard.tumblr.com/post/166617984376/today-i-honestly-drove-by-a-small-butcher-store-in).

  


“I gotta.”

Sam’s never seen Barnes like this. That said, he’s never exactly seen Steve like this either: reclined on the bench, legs out long in front of him, with his hands over his face like he’s embarrassed to live.

“Bucky… I’m begging you," Steve says.

“Oh,” Barnes interrupts, bouncing on his toes. He looks almost _chipper_. “I’m gonna.”

“I hate this,” Steve says.

“I love it a lot,” Barnes says with a grin.

Steve rolls off the bench and tries to crawl on his hands and knees across the tiny grassy knoll they're sitting in that New York has deigned to call a park. Barnes only grins at him and rolls up his sleeves. 

“Wilson, you coming?”

The shop is called, _Big Boi Meat Market._

Sam looks down at his own biceps where they bulge impressively over his chest. “I mean, I think I’d better.”

Barnes grins wider. “Nice.”

Steve’s face flashes betrayal. “Not you too!”

“Steve, come on.” Barnes gestures at the shop. “It’s our calling.”

“Speak for yourselves,” Steve deadpans from his hands and knees. “I’m skinny Steve Rogers. Gust of wind could knock me down.”

“If you say so,” Barnes says, and checks his reflection in his phone. “But we are absolutely getting a picture before we go.”

“Can’t do that if I’m not here,” Steve says cheerfully, and rolls to his feet out of Barnes’ grip.

“We’ll get him,” Barnes vows, scowling at him as he walks away.

Sam smirks. “So what’s the plan here?”

“We walk in pretending like we don’t know shit about butchers.”

“That it?”

“I mean…” Barnes shrugs. “Yeah?”

“Nice,” says Sam.

They go in together. “We’re here for the big boy meat market,” Barnes deadpans. 

It's a perfect delivery. Sam manages not to crack, but it’s a damn close thing.

  


  


  


After two hours without contact, Steve becomes concerned about the events that might have unfolded at Big Boi Meat Market.

He stares at the ceiling and reflects on the days Bucky never would have done something like this. “Public decency, Rogers!” Steve mutters to himself, pretending to be him. He spends some time sketching Bucky flexing to distract himself, but he glances nervously out the window often enough that he finally rolls to his feet and vows that he’ll be in and out. There’s no way Big Boi Meat Market could be a front for Hydra... 

...Unless it is. Unless they predicted the Captains America wouldn’t be able to resist troll bait like this.

They greatly underestimated the degree of shame Steve still carries from his USO days. Never again will he beef performatively. Yet the possibility of disaster has him almost breaking that rule just to find out what happened. After enough time hemming and hawing, the door finally opens for him just as Steve reaches for the knob. 

Bucky is revealed, cheerfully carrying a bag. “Hey,” he says, nonchalant. “You going somewhere?”

Steve examines him carefully. “No," he grinds. He throws his keys back in the dish. “How was the meat market?”

“It was great,” Bucky says breathlessly. He sets the bag down on the counter. “I thought it was a joke, but they actually have some pretty sick cuts.”

“Pretty… sick… cuts.”

“Yeah. It’s kind of expensive, but incredibly sourced. You want a steak, Steve? I can make you a steak.”

“I–”

“I’m going back there,” Bucky says, and pops a morsel of some kind of cured meat into his mouth. “Mm,” he says, slamming a fist on the counter. “Goddamn. That is some quality meat.”

Suddenly Steve’s finding the humour in this. “You like a good quality meat, huh?”

Bucky doesn’t even hesitate in gesturing at him. “You knew that.”

Steve smiles, helplessly fond. “So how’d the troll go?” he asks, leaning against the counter. Bucky’s already getting ready to cook. He loves to watch Bucky cook. “They get that kind of thing a lot, guys walking in pretending to be smartasses?”

“Oh, yeah,” Bucky says, “but usually from guys looking for big boys. Not guys who are big boys. They were pretty happy about that. Said they don’t usually get an offer for new big boys.”

“So they were cool with it?”

“Ah, yeah. I showed them a picture of you, said they want to meet you some day.”

“So it was deliberate.”

“It was off the Village, Steve, what do you think?”

Steve frowns. Suddenly he feels disappointed that he wasn’t part of this after all.

“Don’t look like that,” Bucky says. “I’m sure they’ll put you on the board if you ask.”

His envy disappears as fast as it came. “On the board?”

“The board of big boys.”

Steve buries his face in his hands again. “The what?” he croaks, re-emerging.

Bucky only grins and flips a pan over in his hand. “Go see for yourself.”

  


  


  


Why would he? He doesn’t need to know. No need to understand the intricacies of the Big Boi Meat Market’s big boy board. Steve is fine. He’s happy living in ignorance. He –

Those are Bucky’s giant, bulging biceps.

Steve spins in place in the middle of the sidewalk, eyes trying to track the bus that’s just gone by. He sprints after it, mouth agape, until finally he catches up with it and sees–

It’s a bus advertisement, for Big Boi Meat Market, with Bucky’s blown up biceps as its promotional image.

Oh God. Oh, God. Steve doesn’t know what he feels but it’s weird. He’s weird about it. This is a weird situation. He turns away and collapses into the nearest bench, but his bewilderment and consternation only compound when another bus goes by – with Sam’s biceps on it.

At least, he thinks.

He’s pretty sure.

_God damn it._

When Steve flies in the front door, Bucky is cheerfully unpacking another cut of actually amazing-looking meat from within its embellage of butcher’s paper.

“Bucky,” Steve says gravely, and throws a pamphlet at him. He had walked into Big Boi Meat Market to give them a piece of his mind, but found yet more promotional material with his friends’ biceps all over them. Steve had found himself so unbearably winded by it that he’d only had the wherewithal to grab a few and get out of there.

Bucky looks at the pamphlet and lights up. “Oh, nice!”

“ _Oh, nice?_ ”

“They turned out!”

Steve stares at him. “What did.”

“Are there bus ads too?”

“There are bus ads.”

He holds the pamphlet aloft. “Pretty much the same?”

“Yep.”

“Great. This’ll bring in a lot of revenue.”

Steve blinks. “Did you do this on _purpose_?”

“Free meat.”

Something about this doesn’t compute. “ _...What?_ ”

“Yeah. They saw me and Sam and knew they needed, like, an advertisement campaign that was less bear-beef and more beef-beef, so they took pictures of our arms or whatever in exchange for a lifetime supply of meat.”

At no point is this situation becoming comprehensible to Steve. “I'm sorry, _what_?”

“Lifetime supply of meat.” Bucky gestures at the steaks. “Look at this shit, Steve! That’s a twenty dollar cut, easy. Absolutely free. I’m dreaming.”

Steve, slack-jawed, stumbles slowly backward into a chair. “Am I dreaming?”

“Can’t beat Big Boi’s meat.”

“Oh _God_ ,” Steve groans, but Bucky only laughs.

  


  


  


“You seen ‘em?” Sam asks, weirdly glowing as he barges in the door.

“Fucking yes,” Bucky says, brandishing a pamphlet at him. 

Sam snatches it, beaming. “Can you believe this?”

Bucky nods to Steve where he’s lying on the sofa, sprawled, trying to make sense of his disastrous life. “He’s not even happy for us.”

Sam frowns at him, but seems to decide he’s not interested. “Hey, you get your steaks already?”

“Cookin’ em now. You want? Don’t think Steve’s interested.”

“Hell, yeah,” Sam says, pulling up a chair.

Steve groans in intense regret for everything in his life that has ever happened.

And that’s the story of how Bucky and Sam finally bonded over Big Boi Meat Market.

  


  



	2. Bathtub Pet Surprise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday, Stove! Your present is surprise bathtub kitten. (Spoiler: it's Bucky's present.)

  


The front hall is a shambles. 

The floor is soaking wet and covered in mud, and Steve can't make sense of the chaos; it trails off toward the bedroom, the bathroom and nowhere else. There's no evidence of a break-in; no evidence that there was even a struggle, except for a small collection of pastries which have strewn themselves across the counter, croissants facedown on the floor.

Bucky would never leave a pastry to languish. Steve puts the groceries down and tries to think.

He checks in with Bucky's weapons in immediate proximity -- a knife in the light fixture, pistol under the sink -- but the light's intact and the cabinets look undisturbed, so maybe this isn't the disaster it seems. Still, Steve grabs a steel lid from the dish drainer, just in case, as he steps toward the bedroom. 

"Buck?" he calls hesitantly, creeping down the hall.

" _Steve_ \--" then, amid a gentle thump -- "thank _God._ C'mere a second, I need a second opinion."

Steve relaxes his shoulders. He steps to a neutral position; pushes open the bathroom door. "Are you okay? What the hell happened in the--"

Bucky's sitting against the wall beside the bathtub, looking up at Steve with a knit brow. He looks absolutely _drenched,_ clothes clinging to his skin. "What happened?" Steve says at once, dropping to his knees. "Are you hurt?"

Bucky just frowns at his lid-shield, concern dropping at once into cynicism. "The hell is that?"

Undeterred, Steve runs fingers through Bucky's soaking hair. "Aren't you cold?"

"Did you think that was gonna help you? You know it's _Hydra_ hunting us, right?"

"I'm resourceful. What happened? Why are you all wet?"

Bucky clicks his tongue, worry replacing itself on his face. "I don't -- know things."

"Things."

"You're the one always talking about a dog, are they... different?"

Steve frowns. "Different than…"

"Are animals different from people," Bucky says louder, as though he thinks Steve very stupid, then nods behind him into the bathtub. Steve realizes he's got a hand hooked over into it, that he's holding his fingers open and welcoming -- a little hesitant -- just inside a little tent made of tea towels.

Steve looks at Bucky. Bucky frowns at Steve. "What are you waiting for?" Bucky says. "Look at this animal and tell me what he needs, would you?"

Concern very nearly entirely evapourating into amusement, Steve shuffles on his knees and peers into the makeshift house. Bucky delicately pulls back a teatowel curtain to reveal a tiny kitten, barely more than a soaked puffball, curled up on a facecloth and looking entirely pathetic. His back half is caked in mud; he has a cardboard cone taped onto its head. He blinks pathetically up at Steve with wide eyes and immediately emits a tiny gurgling sound.

One of its front legs appears to be splinted.

Steve sits back on his haunches, hands on his knees, and fights desperately to keep a straight face. "Did you... make those?"

"One of his _legs_ is _broken._ "

"Yes. And you splinted it." He leans forward to peer back into the kitten tent, but Bucky nearly leaps a foot in the air when Steve so much as tries to push back the tiny curtain again. Steve holds out a steadying hand, setting it broad against Bucky's chest just for something warm to ground him, and pushes the curtain back anyway.

The kitten just gurgles at him again.

"He's _scared,_ " Bucky says, batting Steve's hand away, "and his mobility's bad, and he doesn't like people so that puts it on _you_ to leave him alone--"

"Hmm."

"Don't _hmm_ at me, you judgmental little shit. Take responsibility for yourself."

"Okay," Steve says. He's still fighting a losing battle against the laughter dancing in his chest.

"He's _scared,_ " Bucky says again.

"I know he is."

"He was gonna drown if I didn't do something."

"Okay."

"I didn't know what to do."

"It looks like you knew exactly what to do."

"His _leg_ is _broken_!"

Sitting on his haunches, Steve coaxes Bucky's face to rest against his chest, mostly just so that he won't see the grin Steve can't fight anymore. "I know it is. But he's okay now, Buck."

"I think he sounds like that because of water in his lungs? He didn't sound like that before."

"We'll help, I promise. Can you take me back a second here? Where did you find him, exactly?"

"In -- a stormdrain."

" _In_ a stormdrain."

"Yes," Bucky says acidly. Steve's not doing a very good job of containing himself. He has to bite his lip to force himself to calm. "I was walking down the street, and I heard him in distress. No one else heard him, or else they _did_ and they didn't _care,_ fucking _godless_ society--"

"It was raining," Steve says. "Stormdrain was full."

" _Yes._ And his leg was stuck under something, and he was making these sounds -- they were not normal cat sounds but they were _loud_ , right? And the water--"

"So you heard him… mewling. Under all of that noise."

Bucky just clenches his jaw. 

"Does it seem possible that your -- ah -- attention to a high degree of situational detail--"

"You can say hypervigilance."

"--might have given you a leg up on hearing a baby kitten in distress over the rest of the general population?"

"Oh, yeah? Should I be giving people the benefit of the doubt, here, _Steve_? Because no one even responded to me when I said, 'hey, does anyone hear that kitten? I think there's a kitten in there.'"

"I don't think anybody would have known what to do."

"Well once I tore the grate off the storm drain I'm hard pressed to think why no one even offered to _help_ \--"

"Bucky," Steve interrupts, very seriously. "Did you tear the grate off a storm drain in broad daylight just to save this kitten?"

Bucky blinks at him repeatedly, as though trying to figure out what about this Steve could conceivably be missing. "To _save a life,_ Rogers, yes. I did."

Steve nods, very solemn. "I see."

"Oh, don't give me that! You would've done the same thing."

"Just -- all that attention--"

"He," Bucky says, gesturing wildly, "was _in distress_!"

"Okay," Steve says, grinning helplessly again. Bucky begrudgingly lets his face be pressed back against Steve's chest. "So -- okay. Sorry. Keep going. After you tore the grate off the storm drain--"

"Can you _please_ ," Bucky talks over him, a little muffled by Steve's pecs, "help me assess the appropriate level of care--"

"I just want to know what happened!" Steve says. "It's important, okay, just--"

"And then I climbed into the sewers," Bucky says loudly, "and I saved the fucking kitten from fucking drowning in the fucking storm drain, and, yeah, it was the middle of the day, and all of those people were perfectly happy to _watch_ and _applaud me_ as I slithered out of the fucking sewers like a goddamn -- xenomorph--"

Steve cracks up.

"--but not _one of them_ could tell me where to find a veterinarian. And it was still raining," Bucky goes on, and Steve understands the distress in him -- the desperation Bucky has to do this one thing right; the certainty he has that he's screwed it up anyway. "And he was kind of wheezing, and I don't like it, and nobody in this fucking city knows a goddamn thing about animal care apparently. So I decided to bring him in to get warm, at the very least, and I did what I could for his stupid foot instead of wandering through the rain trying to find an open vet on a Sunday. Okay?"

"Okay," Steve says, trying for soothing. He rakes Bucky's sopping hair gently, fondly away from his face. "Quick work. That's a nice cone."

"It's soggy," he says mournfully.

"You built him a beautiful house out of towels."

"He's -- alone, and I think cats -- they huddle for warmth, right? But I -- run cold, so I thought--"

Steve's heart breaks a little then. 

"There's a hot water bottle under there," Bucky confides.

"That's very," Steve says, but then affection chokes him and he has to start again. "Okay. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna find an emergency vet."

The tension physically drains out of Bucky's form. " _Thank_ you. That _is_ a thing, right?"

"Absolutely it is. They'll know what to do."

He pitches his forehead against Steve's shoulder, shoulders lax with relief. "I don't know the first thing about taking care of something," he mutters, sounding suddenly exhausted.

Steve looks at him hard. "Now, you _know_ that's not true."

"I don't know _anymore._ "

Steve hums his displeasure and shakes his head at his phone. "I'm not gonna let that slip, Bucky, sorry. Me besides -- you were a stellar caregiver to your sisters."

Bucky just plants his face deeper into Steve's arm and mutters something about shutting up.

"Nope. You wanna know something?"

"No," Bucky clips.

"In my Avengers days," Steve says anyway, "I suddenly found myself a teacher out of nowhere. I'd never done anything like that before. I was half-assing it and pretending, and I didn't know where to start. So I thought about who I could pretend to be to look like I knew what I was doing, and I realized there were only three people who ever taught me a damn thing successfully. They were Rob Thompson, with painting by gradient; Natasha, with combat; and you, with teaching me math."

"Oh, come on."

"I channeled Nat on the combat drills and Thompson on finding creative solutions to seemingly impossible situations, and I channeled you on sheer determination and patience. Because there wasn't a damn thing I did that fazed you for a second, even though I was godawful. I threw things, I stabbed things, I shouted at you, I broke down, and you waited until I was finished and then told me to get back at it, and you found another way to explain the same thing until I got it."

"You _failed_ math, Steve. _Every time._ "

"But I passed every final exam," he says. "Pretty solidly, too. The only reason I didn't pass the classes is because I'd already failed so badly by the time you stepped in that there was no saving me. There wasn't a single class I finished without finally understanding the material, in the end."

"That's _your_ determination," Bucky objects, but Steve shakes his head.

"No it was not. Here -- let's talk about your sisters. Rebecca couldn't grasp chemistry, remember that? She didn't even need to be taking the course but she did anyway and thought she should've stuck to homemaking, but you sat her down and learned everything you could from the textbook and explained it to her until she understood. And Sally, with long division? I got sidetracked here, my point is -- you did all this while also picking up the slack after your dad passed on. I remember coming over once and all three girls were doing their homework while you were cooking and consoling your mother about how you were gonna balance their debts."

"Steve -- I was faking all that."

"You were improvising," Steve admits, "I'll give you that. Kind of like you did when you patched me up after all those fights. Kind of like you did when we were in the field and Duggan twisted his ankle and Dernier blew off a finger and Morita got grazed by a bullet a hair's breadth from an artery. But that doesn't mean you weren't fucking _good_ at it, Bucky. Because I learned math and Rebecca passed chemistry and all three of your sisters grew up to be capable and ambitious women besides, and among the Commandos, every single one of us survived the war." He pauses to dial the number of a vet. "Except you and me. But I didn't have you around to help me improvise, so that explains me."

Bucky stares at him. The vet answers. Steve explains the situation carefully while Bucky looks on, struck by a peculiar sobriety, perfectly silent until Steve hangs up the phone.

"They can see us as soon as we get there," Steve says, "and they said you did an outstanding job in stabilizing his paw and bringing him in to dry off." He brushes a stray drop of water where it's formed on his neck from his sopping hair. "You're just the mother hen type, Bucky -- whether you like it or not. Being out of practice with something doesn't mean you don't know how. You did exactly the right things to keep this kitten safe."

Bucky just keeps looking at him. Steve reaches up to pull a towel off the nearest rack and rubs it vigorously in his hair, taking it away again to find a slight fluffier Bucky still looking at him like he's out of his mind.

"He's too small," Bucky finally says, and Steve nods and kisses him, gentle, hands warm against his face. "I think he's the runt of the litter or something."

"Yeah," Steve says. "Seems like you have a weakness for those."

"How do we get him there?"

"How'd you get him here?"

"I made a little pocket with my shirt."

"Then we'll just wrap him up and make sure we don't aggravate his leg too much. You're definitely stronger than he is, anyway."

"He should be comfortable. I don't want him to fight me."

"I don't think he will," Steve says. He's smiling again. Bucky scowls at him. "Well, you could always slide a platter under his house and carry him on it like a tiny prince."

That, finally, gets a smile out of him. Bucky pushes to standing; lifts the tented towel off from over him, to objecting gurgles. "Well, I don't want to give him a complex."

"Yeah. That, and not a palace made of towels, would be too far."

"I _told_ you I didn't know what to do," Bucky says, and he scoops the kitten up.

  


  


Naturally, they keep the kitten.

Steve barely minds that it costs literal thousands of dollars for the thin smile on Bucky's face every time the cat limps into the room. He's reluctant to name him, and Steve can't figure out why, until weeks later when they return to the vet to take off his cast and assess the course of his antibiotics.

"He still can't talk," Bucky tells her, a little too assertively. "Is that normal?"

"Some cats have unusual meows," the vet says. "His lungs sound fine."

"Are you sure?" Bucky says.

"I'm sure," says the vet.

"Because when I heard him in the drain it seemed like he could meow--"

"It's normal," the vet says. "He might get his ability to meow back in time."

Bucky looks at the vet as though assessing her for deceit; but then finally he nods and accepts the kitten back into his arms.

  


  


Steve thinks that's the end of it, until-- 

"We're getting a second opinion," Bucky says, the second they leave the vet.

Steve shuts his eyes tight and looks to the sky. "No, we're not."

  


  


They get a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth.

"What is wrong with your voicebox," Bucky asks the kitten after their return from the vet. "Are you trolling me deliberately?"

The cat gurgles cheerfully and then scampers away.

"Fucking nuisance," Bucky says, then adds -- "I'm naming him Steve."

It's been six weeks without a name, and _this_ is what he decides. 

"Please don't," Steve begs.

"He's Steve now."

"I'm Steve," he says plaintively.

"Guess you're both Steve then." And he shrugs offhandedly, like there's nothing to be done.

  


  


The smaller Steve still sleeps in a house made of tea towels, erected permanently in the corner of the living room.

Bucky menacingly threatens anyone who tries to say a damn thing about it.

Oddly, even Sam manages to keep his mouth shut on the subject.

Steve is never, ever successful in his petitions to change his name.

  



	3. Haunted Carriage Ride

Bucky closes the pamphlet. “We have to do it.”

Steve looks at him, circumspect. “You don’t think it’s gonna be… you know…”

“Incredibly fucking stupid? Yes. That’s the point. Call Wilson, he loves this kind of stuff.”

“Does he?”

“You don’t – oh my god, fine, I’ll call him myself. You call Romanov.”

“Will she…?”

“Yes already, _Jesus_. Have you even met your friends?”

Support for the idea is unanimous and astounding.

Steve resigns himself, therefore, to this notion of a ‘haunted carriage ride.’

  


  


“This is perfection."

Bucky says it deadpan and with a mouth full of kettlecorn, so it takes Steve a second to parse his sincerity. It appears, in the end, he means it – but for the life of him Steve can’t figure out why.

“Can you break this down for me?” he asks, trying not to grimace as a balloon covered in a napkin floats by on a string. “Why is this enjoyable?”

“ _Why_ is this _enjoyable_?” shouts Sam from behind them.

Bucky turns back to face Steve and shoves another handful of popcorn in his mouth. “What he said.”

It is neither, in the end, a carriage ride nor very haunted. The ‘carriages’ are, in fact, tiny open traincars, led by other traincars in horse shapes moving at about six miles per hour. They are circling a fairly impressive track in a park Steve’s never heard of, and they’re surrounded by corn fields and – inexplicably – what appear to be paper cutouts of leafless trees.

Occasionally there is a cackle from around them on a crackling sound system. Sometimes something mechanical rustles in the field. 'Ghosts' float around them, some of them occasionally falling to the ground. It is, on all accounts, an exceptionally poor production.

“I’m serious,” says Steve.

“So am I. How do you not see it?”

“It’s 2017 and this is what they manage?”

“It’s 2017 and someone put this together on _purpose_!” Bucky almost seems to be bouncing in his chair. “It’s godawful!”

“Yes! It is!”

“Steve, that’s the _point_!”

Steve blinks his incomprehension. He turns in his seat and catches Natasha’s eye. “You understand this?”

“Absolutely,” she says mildly, cocking a smile.

“Why?”

“Because it’s terrible.”

Steve turns back to Bucky. “Why does everyone understand this but me?”

“Oh,” Bucky says, and puts the popcorn down. “Well. Remember when we used to go to the fair, back when?”

“Yeah.”

“And we’d go with dates because the fair was an easy place not to hate that we were pretending not to be together…”

“Yeah.”

“And we’d go into the house of mirrors or one of those rotating bird rides and you’d just sit there beside your date and not say anything?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, everyone else was making time.”

Steve blinks. “What?”

“Yeah.”

“Not _everyone_.”

“Yeah, Rogers. _Everyone._ That’s the whole point of shitty rides like these.”

“You’re joking.”

Bucky waves a finger in the air. “Someone probably got state funding to set up their very own make-out ride. Guaranteed one of the higher-ups is bringing someone here every night, purporting to impress but then winding up self-deprecating when it’s horrible.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding!”

“No way.” He shakes the bag of kettlecorn. “All of their money is going into candy. This shit is good. Honestly the kettlecorn and, you know, relative privacy alone is enough to keep people coming back. I’d guess their numbers will go up this year.”

Steve gestures wildly around at everything. “Someone would make out _here_?”

Bucky hitches a thumb over his shoulder. Steve turns to see Natasha and Sam indeed 'making time,’ Natasha crawling happily into Sam’s lap like they’d come alone.

Steve turns hastily back around, trying to box away his shock. Bucky snickers into another handful of kettlecorn. “Told you.”

“So… you knew this when we came here.”

“Yeah.”

“You brought me – _all of us_ – to a make-out ride on _purpose._ ”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“To make out, dumbass.” He holds the bag aloft. “Also the food here is rated pretty highly on Yelp.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, voice low. “If you think–”

Bucky responds with some half-smile and a gentle tug of his collar. “Trust me,” he says; and his mouth, when it slots over Steve's, tastes of salt and sweet. There’s this smile on his face like he knows what Steve's thinking, and--

Steve thinks he finally gets it when some awful cackling flickers on in the background. “Okay,” he mutters, and casts only a fleeting glance backward as Bucky mouths at his jaw. “Okay, I guess I can – my god, can they be doing _that_?”

“Why the hell not?” Bucky says; and he pushes Steve’s legs apart and drops to his knees.

  


  


In the end, he finds the ambiance does add to the experience. He and Bucky visit the “haunted carriage ride” another three times before it closes for the season. 

It reports, to no one’s shock but Steve's, record returns.

Bucky won’t tell him how he got hold of the kettle corn recipe at the end of it. But -- ultimately -- Steve decides he's better off not to ask.

  



	4. Musicals

  


They do a chronological tour. 

_West Side Story. Annie. The Wizard of Oz_ (it totally counts). By the time they get to _Grease_ and the '50s it’s been 13 hours of musicals and they’ve both lost track of any tension in the world.

They have been eating only junk food the entire day. The sun has set. They do not care.

All they care about now is -- had they lived through the '50s -- which one of them is more likely to have been Danny.

Bucky has a compelling argument. He probably would’ve gone greaser if he’d been young in the '50s. He’d have built a car on weekends, and Steve would've helped (a conjecture to which Steve objects). Bucky decides he could probably make the Danny hair curl thing happen, to which Steve replies with a threat to cut his hair in the middle of the night and find out once and for all while he’s sleeping. 

Bucky ignores him; points out that he was basically the Danny of 1941, and that Steve should just admit it already.

Steve insists that he’d fill out the jacket better, as though that settles the argument. “But you can be Kenicke,” he adds generously.

“I’m not Kenicke,” Bucky says with a sneer. But all contempt drains out of his face, comprehension dawning, when Sandy comes twirling onto the screen. “Oh, shit,” Bucky says.

Steve looks at Bucky, then looks at the screen, then back at Bucky. “You’re not serious.”

“Steve.”

“ _No._ ”

“Shit. You are.”

“I am not.”

“I’m sorry to tell you, Rogers. I am so sorry to have to be the one to point out the obvious.”

“Bucky, come on.”

“But you are definitely--”

“I am not!”

“--one hundred percent--”

“It’s just because she’s blond, isn’t it? I’m being typecast.”

“ _Sandra Dee._ ”

All levity falls from Steve’s face in one. “I am _not_ Sandra Dee.”

Bucky is too busy clutching his chest with how hard he’s laughing to answer.

They are silent the entire rest of the film, except for three things:

1\. Steve trying to convince Bucky that he’s Kenicke;  
2\. Steve saying, with deadpan certainty, “I’m nothing like Sandra Dee”; and  
3\. Bucky’s wheezing, hacking, at times uncontrollable laughter as he points at the screen.

At some point Sam comes in and finds them somehow still watching musicals, which is exactly where he left them after breakfast that morning. Meanwhile, he’s run 13 miles, eaten three distinct and fairly sizeable meals, spent five hours researching, and neutralized a small business that was masquerading as legitimate whilst still operating under Hydra funding on his own.

“The hell is wrong with you,” Sam asks, upon seeing Bucky actually _laughing_ at Steve, who's toiling a bright, luminescent red.

On the screen, Stockard Channing is singing -- _Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee!_

“Nothing,” mutters Steve.

_Lousy with virginity~!_

“Sandra Dee was fashioned off Steve Rogers,” Bucky manages, with a commanding facsimile of a straight face.

Sam looks at Bucky, then looks at Steve, then looks at the screen. “You guys always like this when you watch movies?”

Each silent for wildly different reasons, both of them nod.

Sam nods, too; disappears into the kitchen, then comes back with a fresh bowl of popcorn. “Better be here for this, then,” he says, and sits not on the sofa beside them but facing them, taking out his phone.

Steve blinks at him. “Don’t you want to–”

“Uh uh,” Sam says. He appears to be vigorously texting. Steve has a bad feeling it's Natasha at the other end. “No. Y'all are the real show here.”

And it's more than a little weird with Sam watching them while they're watching the film, but after tears actually sprout to Bucky's eyes for how hard he's laughing during _Hopelessly Devoted,_ Steve decides maybe he's glad there's a witness to this after all. He's not sure anyone would believe him if he tried to tell them.

Eventually Sam hips Steve to the side and sits down next to him, passing the popcorn. It's peculiarly pleasant, with the three of them, even if the banter is at Steve's expense. 

"Have you seen _Saturday Night Fever_?" Sam asks, as the credits roll on the screen.

"No," they say in unison.

"You gotta watch _Saturday Night Fever_ ," Sam says.

It takes all of five minutes for Steve to say, "This is Bucky," to Sam's immediate spiels of expectant laughter. "This would've been Bucky if he'd been young in the '70s."

"Does that fucking make me Danny then?" Bucky shouts in his face, throwing handfuls of popcorn at Sam all the while.

They spend the whole movie debating and bantering, none of them really watching.

They watch -- or whatever -- most musicals together after that.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Saturday Night Fever is bad in fact. Imagine Bucky winces and fast-forwards through most of it, for obvious reasons but also not least because he remembers parts of the '70s and he doesn't care to relive them.


	5. Pop! at the Punk Show

  


There's perils in trying to acclimatize themselves to the present, but there are worse perils in trying to trick the other into cracking under the strain of it first.

Bucky looks slowly over at Steve while they're reading, sitting tip to toe on the sofa, and presses his socked foot obnoxiously against Steve's face. “The fuck is this,” Bucky says, nodding at the speaker.

Steve looks over at him, shoving Bucky's foot indiscriminately under his back to lie on, and says to him, articulating each syllable: 

“ _Pop punk._ ”

It’s probably the most ridiculous two words in a row Steve’s ever said on purpose. Bucky frowns as though he's never heard them before. “Pop... punk.”

Steve nods and puts on that slightly worried expression that tends to precede any honest emotion. “First there was punk and also pop,” he explains. “Punk originated out of antifascist movements, actually.”

“No shit! Is that why those kids chased me through Berlin in the '80s?”

"Probably more likely they thought you were one of them," Steve says.

"Oh."

“Then pop became punk and punk became pop," Steve tells him. "Not all the time.”

“Right,” says Bucky, as though this was the most obvious thing in the world. “Pop punk.”

Steve gestures loosely at the speakers. “Pop punk.”

On the other side of the board room, Sam and Natasha are passing snacks back and forth and watching this unfold with utter fascination.

“This band is called Fall Out Boy,” Sam calls to them.

Bucky’s brow furrows with incredulity. “Why?”

That does it. Steve cracks up first. 

His punishment is Bucky's foot in his face again. "Oh, was punk antifa, Steve?" Bucky shouts at him, leaving Steve trying to wrestle Bucky's toes out of his laughing mouth. "Do you think?"

"Stop," Steve says, hiccuping. "Stop, I'm sorry."

"I wouldn't call this garbage pop punk anyway," Bucky says, raising his book to hide his face.

"Oh?" Steve says. This time it's his foot fighting to pull the book down. "Really?"

"Green Day--"

"You have opinions about Green Day?" Sam shouts in incredulity.

"Stay out of this," Bucky says.

"Fall Out Boy originated from the hardcore punk scene," adds Natasha.

"Are they fucking antifa though?" Bucky yells, and Steve's losing it all over again. "No? If they're not antifa they're not punk anything. Jesus _Christ._ "

"Are you sure you weren't involved in this movement, Buck?" Steve asks him, wiping an errant tear from the corner of his eye.

Bucky's silence drags on for a little too long. Steve prods his foot at his cheek, getting an angry swat for his efforts. 

"No comment," Bucky says after what feels like an age.

Three ecstatic exclamations flood from all corners of the room. Bucky immediately drops to try to crawl under the sofa while Steve tries to wrestle him out from under it, and after a great deal of shouting and laughing and wrestling later Bucky finally admits that he wasn't _directly_ part of the punk scene but he might have gone to a show on a mission and he has all sorts of information about it now and _Fall Out Boy_ isn't _anything_ like--

"Green Day?" Natasha says, dry.

Bucky throws a pillow at her from the site of their disheveled brawl. "Don't make me defend Green Day."

"What about," she says slowly, "Panic! at the Disco?"

And Bucky cocks his head with a wince. "Panic at the _what_?"

That gets Steve going again.

They don't stream the pop channels for a while after that.

  



	6. That Time Steve Ruined A Perfectly Good Sauce

  


Steve comes home one day to find Bucky in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, towel thrown over his shoulder, hair tied primly back.

He throws his keys onto the counter and surveys the scene before him. “Smells good.”

Bucky turns with a ladle in his hand and leans over the counter toward him. “Taste,” he says brusquely.

Steve gives him a circumspect look, but leans forward to taste the sauce off the ladle when Bucky glowers at him. His eyebrows fly up at once. It is, in fact, extremely good. 

“Wow.”

“Right?” Apparently satisfied, Bucky turns away from him and deposits the ladle back in its pot. “I dunno what I did, but it was genius.”

“I — yeah.” Before he can say anything else, Bucky’s spun around again. He leans Steve against the counter until their lips meet, Bucky's soft and full, Steve going loose with feeling. He lights up from the first moment of contact and slides both hands into Bucky’s hair, fond and thorough. “Hi,” he says, smiling as Bucky pulls away.

“Hi,” Bucky replies. He flashes Steve some small, sincere smile as he turns back to his cooking. “Go away.”

Steve blinks after him. “Okay,” he says, somewhat dazed, then blinks himself to reality again as he pulls his sweater off. “Am I distracting you?”

“Too beautiful for the kitchen.”

“You never seem to complain when I’m cooking you breakfast.”

“I can barely see straight in the morning. You could be anybody.”

“Yes. Any one of your legions of blond, built men.”

“You don’t know my life, Rogers.”

“My mistake.”

Bucky’s smiling again. Steve hates that he’s so suspicious, but — “You feeling all right?”

He interprets the question for what it is and shoots Steve a sidelong glance. “I feel good, all right?” He gestures at the stove. “I’m pleased with this. It's good weather. You’re beautiful in that shirt.” He shrugs idly. “Don’t look now, Rogers, but I might actually be having a good day.”

Steve looks at Bucky in stunned silence, with the fullness of joy, until Bucky throws a scowl over his shoulder. “Don’t make a thing out of it.”

“I’m not gonna make a thing out of it.” Then Steve steps forward, fully intending to make a thing out of it. In three fluid movements he’s taken Bucky into his arms and started kissing him stupid, fingers bunching in his hair and against his back, lips and tongue fumbling around the smile on his face as he leans Bucky hard against the cabinets.

“Steve,” Bucky says, but holds him right back. “Don’t ruin it.”

“Your day?”

“My sauce. I have to check it.”

“Then check it.” Steve lets him turn back to it, then slips behind him, hands on Bucky’s hips. His thumbs press gently at his lower back; Steve mouths at Bucky’s shoulders as he watches him move.

“If you ruin my perfect sauce,” Bucky mutters, leaning his head to expose more neck.

Steve breathes his laughter against the shell of Bucky’s ear, just to feel the shiver run through him. “I’m not gonna ruin your perfect sauce.”

“Like you’re not making a thing out of it?”

“I love you, you know that?”

“Here we go. You gonna start singing now?”

“No,” Steve says; and Bucky sets the ladle down and turns in Steve’s arms, grabbing suddenly at his hips until he's pushed hard against the opposite counter. 

"Good," Bucky says against his lips.

“How long we got?”

“Until what, sauce stirring?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s really a continuous—“

“Three minutes? Four?”

Bucky’s lashes flutter. “Come on.”

“What, you want me to do it _while_ you're cooking?"

"I didn't--"

"Well, okay, Buck. You asked for it."

"I emphatically did _not_ \--"

But Steve is kissing him, that whole and stupid thing that always leaves Bucky clingy and supplicant, and when Steve pushes him back against the counter by the stove and puts the ladle in his hand, Bucky only rolls his eyes to the ceiling as Steve falls to his knees.

"You're a menace," Bucky tells him.

Steve hums and cheerfully undoes his pants.

“I can’t believe this. Everything's about sex with you.”

"Not everything."

"I fucking _dust_ and you're hot for it."

"I hate dust," Steve says in his most seductive voice; then, still looking at him with wide, affectionate eyes, he presses his lips against Bucky's hip and smiles against it, reveling in the way swear words tumble out of his mouth as he gets back to stirring.

Bucky eventually stops stirring. It takes a while, but Steve's still proud of himself.

And that's the story of how Steve ruined Bucky's perfect sauce.

(Bucky doesn't drop it for six weeks.) 

  



	7. Cavemen v. Astronauts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on a prompt meme: combine two tropes and explain how you'd write the fic. This one is for "Did They Or Didn't They?" and "Locked In A Room." You can also reblog this on [tumblr.](http://newsbypostcard.tumblr.com/post/175029696461/did-they-or-didnt-they-locked-in-a-room-for)

  


They last twenty-four hours in the bathroom Sam locks them in. They are somehow still audibly shouting when Sam lets them out.

“You somehow don’t think technology matters!” Barnes is saying. His hair is sticking up in every direction; his eyes are bugging. Apart from exhausted, he just looks… crazy. “In this world, in this economy—”

“What does the economy have to do with it!” Steve’s just as unkempt. For some reason, he’s also stripped down to his underwear. “Cavemen were survivors.”

“Oh, and you don’t think astronauts are survivors? You don’t think they go through _years_ of testing, _years_ of drills—”

“That’s exactly my point.” Steve slaps the back of his hand into his palm. “They are too practiced, too rigid! They can’t _improvise_ —”

“Uh,” says Sam, looking around the room in concern. Steve’s clothes are everywhere. There’s water on the floor. The shower curtain has been torn off its track, and there are more moisturizers on the counter than he cares to account for. “What the goddamn hell—”

“Sam,” Steve says, gesturing to him in relief. “Back me up here. Who would win in a fight between—”

“No,” Sam says, pointing a finger. “You are not looping me into this again. You assholes have been at this for _three days_ —”

“Astronauts,” Barnes says triumphantly, hands on his hips. “Thanks, Wilson.”

“No! Not astronauts!”

“Cavemen,” Steve says, gesturing.

“No!!!! I’m not doing this! What the hell happened in here? Why the hell aren’t you wearing clothes? Why is there _water_ —”

“I don’t see how you think technology isn’t an advantage,” Bucky says.

“Astronauts can’t use _technology._ ”

“Of course they can, otherwise what’s the point?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Pit a caveman against an astronaut in hand-to-hand combat and the astronaut is going down.”

“But the astronaut can use!! Tools!! That’s the whole point of _being_ an astronaut in a fight like this—”

“Okay,” Sam says, eyes hanging precariously on the still-open tub of vaseline. “Oh-kay. I can see that you are very much _still_ not done here and that this requires… me to get very far away from this situation… so I’m gonna go ahead and order you fuckers a stack full of pizzas and leave you to it.”

“Sam, no, don’t lock us in—”

“ _Wilson_ , come back here—”

“You know the rules!” Sam says sharply. “You resolve this and then you can come out!”

He locks them in all over again.

This time, he hears it when Steve’s cries of “brute force!” get a lot more high-pitched. Sam doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t need to.

Astronauts would so clearly win anyway. He can’t understand what the fuss is about.

  



	8. Lobe, Drew Lobe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a prompt meme on [tumblr](http://newsbypostcard.tumblr.com/post/175031054256/27-and-34-please).

  


“I’b godda fuckingh kill whoeber bade the commod cold,” Bucky croaks out.

Steve grins and lovingly puts a cup of soup into Bucky’s hands. “Okay.”

“I hade you,” Bucky says. He burrows down deeper into his blankets.

“I know.” Steve lies down in bed next to him, still wearing his cabana shorts.

“Be biserable wid be,” Bucky commands. He points at his shorts. “Take dose off. Byjambas odly.”

“I’m going to the beach without you.”

Bucky gives him a look of betrayal, which, though he is clearly trying hard for anger, mostly just comes out a mixture of mouth-breathing and bleary, given that the majority of his illness seems localized to his sinuses.

“You lobe Sab bore than be,” Bucky pouts.

“Please take those tissues out of your nose,” Steve says, not bothering to fight back his smile. “You sound a thousand times worse than you need to.”

“You do it.”

“No. And I don’t love Sam more than you, I just think we spent a lot of money to—”

“Hydra did this.”

“Hydra didn’t do this.”

“Hydra indvended a commod cold sobehow strongh edough to gnock me out.”

“I think that’s just the special viruses that live on airplanes.”

“Hydra indvended those.”

“Okay,” Steve says, grinning broadly.

“Uuuuuuunnnngh,” Bucky says, tipping his face back to the ceiling.

“God, I love you so much,” Steve says. He means it deeply.

He does, at least, wait until Bucky’s fallen asleep in his bundle of blankets; and he does, also, take the tissues out of his nose once he does, because Steve lives in perpetual fear that Bucky will inhale extra hard and choke to death, not least because it’ll kill the cold as well and he’s not sure Bucky wouldn’t do it out of spite. And he also does it because he knows Bucky did it a million times when Steve was sick back in the day, and Steve never really got to return the favour—it was always too much of a risk for him to be around Bucky when he rarely got sick, and this is the first time Bucky’s really managed it since Steve’s been healthy enough to help him out.

But Bucky gets his comeuppance another three days into the vacation when, Bucky’s immune system apparently at least able to vanquish the fabled foe quickly, he spends a solid three minutes jumping on the bed in his board shorts while Steve, this time, courts death by sinus inflammation.

“I’m Steve Rogers,” Bucky yells, all subtlety abandoned, “and I love the beach!”

“I hade you,” Steve moans.

“I love my sick boyfriend and all of his mucus and how miserable he is, and I love that this is happening to him, because I am a monster.”

“I wasn’t like thad! I was very helpful! Where’s by soup.”

“It’s cooking,” Bucky says mildly. Then he jumps on the bed some more. “I love to go to the beach with my best friend Sam and leave my dying boyfriend on his deathbed to die alone!”

“I wish this thingh had killed you.”

Bucky falls onto the bed beside him and smiles lovingly. “Now we’re even.”

“We’re dowhere dear evenh,” Steve says, giving him doe-eyes.

And in the end Bucky must understand him, because the smile falls from his face and he kisses Steve in the centre of his moist, sweaty forehead. “It’s what we do, Rogers.”

“Kiss me properly.”

“No,” Bucky says, and rolls off the bed again.

“Kiss me properly!! You already had this, cobe back here!”

“We don’t do that!” Bucky says, leaving the room to get his soup, but when he comes back he slides under the covers and sucks Steve’s dick long and good without making him do anything, and in the end Steve’s not that convinced it was that terrible of a vacation, all in all. Even if they were both sick for days.

  



	9. Murder Bookcase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As seen on [tumblr](http://newsbypostcard.tumblr.com/post/175337179256/steve-comes-home-to-find-bucky-perched-in-an).

  


Steve comes home to find Bucky perched in an assassin’s crouch on top of the bookshelf.

“Uh.” He throws his keys in the bowl. “How’s it going, Buck?”

Bucky, putting on an air of false nonchalance, gestures theatrically at the living room. “There’s nothing,” he says, “as far as the eye can see.”

The furniture has been shoved to the far edges of the room, creating a great chasm of space in the centre. Steve surveys the situation in tacit confusion a moment before remembering the online shopping spree Bucky had undergone with frantic intensity a few nights before.

He’d tied his hair out of his face. That’s how Steve had known he was serious about this decor kick.

“Delivery guy didn’t come, huh?” Steve asks mildly.

“Steve,” Bucky asks, as though Steve hadn’t spoken. “What time is it?”

“It’s—” He leans down the corridor to see the clock in the kitchen. “A little past six.”

“And is that, would you say, within the hours of one to five?”

“No.”

“ _No_ ,” Bucky whispers with intensity. “ _It’s not._ ”

Steve blinks at him. Bucky, arms crossed over his chest, is doing this impressive thing with his face where he looks pouting and homicidally angry at the same time.

Affection fills Steve’s chest. He tries to tamp it down. “Are you, um…” He swallows his elation, stepping forward. “What are you doing up there?”

“Being angry!”

Steve presses a fist to his lips to subdue his smile. “Okay.”

Bucky’s expression flashes betrayal. "I want my furniture,” he half-yells.

“Yeah, I know you do.” He stops fighting it and grins outright. Bucky just looks like Steve kicked his puppy. “Why did you order delivery anyway? We could’ve gone to pick it up.”

“I hate department stores, you know that.”

“Too open.”

“Nah, lighting washes me out.”

Steve nods thoughtfully. “You want me to call the number?”

“You think I haven’t already fucking done that?” Bucky brandishes his cell phone at him. “It’s _on its way._ ”

“So it’s on its way.”

“They are _very_ sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Then it’s fine!”

“Holding my furniture hostage,” Bucky says, “is fine?”

“You want something?” Steve asks, deciding this is among the neuroses he’s better off accepting at face value. “Thinking of making a milkshake.”

Bucky’s silent a long time. “I would love a milkshake," he finally says.

“You want it on your murder bookcase?”

“Yes.”

  


  


  


And the furniture does come, and Bucky sits surrounded by furniture parts for the next five days, hair tied back in that ironclad focus again. Steve makes it his job to keep bringing him milkshakes, and by the end of the week, they have a much more beautiful house than they did when they began.

The murder bookcase stays just where it was, overlooking the front door. Steve hadn’t bothered to think anything else would be the case.

  



End file.
